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Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Where Writers Write: Erica Olsen

Welcome to another installment of TNBBC's Where Writers Write!

Where Writers Write is a weekly series that will feature a different author every Wednesday as they showcase their writing spaces using short form essay, photos, and/or video. As a lover of books and all of the hard work that goes into creating them, I thought it would be fun to see where the authors roll up their sleeves and make the magic happen.

She uses the subjects of place, landscape, and
history to write fiction that reflects on the relationship between nature and
culture. She is the author of Recapture& Other Stories (Torrey House Press, 2012).

She lives in the Four
Corners area, where she has worked as an archivist at Edge of the Cedars State
Park Museum in Blanding, Utah,
and as a museum technician at the AnasaziHeritageCenter
in Dolores, Colorado, both grant-funded positions
supporting the preservation of archaeological collections.

Where Erica Olsen Writes

When I’m writing, I like being able to look up and see a
long way. Living in the Four Corners area—in Blanding, Utah (pop. 3, 394), and outside Dolores, Colorado (pop.
933)—I can shift my gaze away from the computer screen, out the window, across
what feels like a hundred miles of mountains and mesa tops. When I was
finishing my first book, Recapture &
Other Stories, I worked on some of the pieces in camp during backpacking and
canoe trips.

Car camping is even more writer friendly. I live in an area
with lots of BLM (Bureau of Land Management) and Forest Service land; this is
federal public land, which means we all own it, and most places, you can just
pull off a back road and camp. This fall, I took notes for a new project while
car camping in southeast Utah near Comb Ridge, a massive sandstone formation
that appears in several of my stories. When stadium cushions meet suitable rock
formations, you’ve got the perfect outdoor office.

On backpacking trips, I bring a small Moleskine notebook. (Don’t
judge me. They’re expensive and have a hipster image, but the covers are
really, really durable.) I also carry pencil stubs. Pencils yield visible
evidence of writerly productivity, and half-size pencils feel best in my hand.
When they’re down to about a 2” length, they go into the backpacking quiver.
Gotta save on weight. It all stays organized in a Zip-Loc. (Here, in northern
Utah’s Wasatch Range.)

After my book was published, I took it on a day hike on
White Mesa, south of Blanding. Recapture
is light and packable, too.

In my stories, recurrent questions include: How does place
shape the stories we tell and the lives we lead? And how do we imagine—how do
we create—the places where we live? Often,
the seed of a story was planted on a backcountry trip, or just a random moment
when I drove down a dirt road to see where it might take me.

On second thought, planting a seed is too agricultural a
metaphor. This process has been more like hunting and gathering. These
story-seeds attached themselves to me, like those determined seeds that burrow
into your socks. From the seeds’ point of view, a passing human works as well
as the hairy hide of any animal to carry them to new ground.

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Who's That Girl?

I have been buried beneath small press and self-published review copies since 2009. My passion for supporting the small press and self publishing communities has driven me out into the world wide web to demonstrate alternative ways to spread the word about amazing publishers, authors, and novels you might never had heard of. Feeding your reading addiction, one book at a time.